White Moon
by Maeahru
Summary: A young girl molds chakra to her will and find herself torn between two worlds. Is one of the worlds more real than the other? Can one of the worlds truly be called evil? Alternate Universe; Future; (no-longer) One shot.
1. Horror

Naruto is owned by Kishimoto and his publishers.

* * *

There had been rumors but I knew they were unsubstantial.

Society had thrived for a hundred years as we lived a perfect and peaceful life. Everything we needed in life we were able to create: The freshest food picked from a brother's garden that afternoon; beautifully woven clothing from gramma's loom; houses crafted over generations by a father and grandfather in large familial plantations.

While the production of such necessities was a joy to create and use, culture and artistry had expanded and become unparalleled in every form! Scholars and entertainers produced plays that made me laugh, cry and sigh with contentment as the drama unfolded; orchestral music pervaded the air even during the most humble of tasks; sculptures, paintings and tapestries were presented on street corners and homes alike.

There had been rumors but they always disappeared over time.

Every month I would join my family and neighbours and watch the red moon rise over the horizon. The festivities were always rapturous as we enjoyed the peace provided by it. Brother always created the most interesting dishes as he shared his culinary skill for all to enjoy; Father would match brother's food with his own dishes-pottery thrown and burnished in elegance and beauty; And Mother worked a forge, preferring to create more practical tools for farmers. But each festival she would create a centerpiece to match her son and husband in skill.

Two rules.

That was all.

Just two rules: Don't participate in sorcery; don't engage with ghosts.

_Idiot_!

One month ago I was ready to show that I could produce the most beautiful of art.

Now? Now I feel alone.

Today I followed mother to the forge. She so caringly and patiently formed her lump of metal at the fire. She always had time for me though!

We would talk of boys while she combed my hair and laugh quietly together. We would go on a walk in the forest and simply enjoy each others presence. I always loved spending time in nature, it had this presence of life that I rarely felt elsewhere.

Two rules: Don't participate in sorcery; don't engage with ghosts.

The first week had been the worst. A rumor had spread, but soon even that had disappeared.

I tried to talk to brother while he made his barley porridge. I might as well have talked to the porridge.

I moved father's dirt bowls. The first few times a strange look had passed over his eyes, but soon he just remembered how forgetful he tended to be and continued his work.

Did I say the first week was the worst?

The mental pain was terrible, but somehow physical discomfort only expounded my suffering.

Barley porridge without an ounce of seasoning would not satiate my stomach while my cotton dress and wooden sandals chafed at my skin.

With nothing to do and no one to acknowledge me, I started to explore.

I was stunned the first time he saw me and actually waved.

He could see me!

I waited half afraid and half overjoyed. He looked to be a young man, several years older than I am, but still full of life. His eyes held my attention the most. I had never seen anything like them. Orange and black stared reassuringly at me and I could feel the life of nature from them.

Two rules.

I soon realized, that like me, he was both a ghost and a sorcerer.

Still, I had nothing else.

I followed him to a village he told me of nearby.

It was a plain thing, wooden houses lined the street with a store and an inn at the crossroad. People in drab clothing worked in some nearby fields while children played with a ball in the street.

It took me a couple days but I soon realized that every person in the town was a ghost and sorcerer. Even the children could be seen blowing smoke through a water ring or racing paper birds through an earthen maze.

Everyone laughed and smiled when they saw the blond man who was trying to find a family I could live with.

By listening I was able to discern he was a "Shadow Guide".

I was also able to learn that not everything was perfect here.

I heard a rumor about a war happening in the west. I heard a rumor of famines striking to the north while a flood had struck a large rivertown to the south. Worst of all, I saw a child push another child in anger.

I know the rumors are true.

Barbarians, that's all they are. Barbarians and ghosts and sorcerers.

So I returned home.

I dutifully prepared for the rising of the red moon with the rest of the family. Brother prepared his best cuisine while father cast the platters on which they rested. I had watched as mother molded a lump of metal into a young girl and sat it proudly in the middle of the table.

_I will never use sorcery again, please, I don't want to be a ghost_!

I can hear my family laugh and smile as they enjoy the red moon, but all I see is a white lump of rock in the sky.

They had a rumor but I disappeared so quickly.

* * *

One shot written to see a different perspective. I hope it was enjoyable.


	2. Loneliness

A/N: I love the concept behind this fanfic world. I may add one-shot chapter whenever I feel like writing something short and fun.

* * *

I cried.

Every day for months I watched my peaceful village live.

Perhaps the home-made wooden flutes played on the street corners weren't stunning to listen to. Apparently the plain rugs weren't wondrously made into magnificent tapestries. The barley or rice porridge with plain fish and vegetables that I had to steal to survive would never make anyone drool in anticipation.

Still I cried each day for the life I no longer lived.

Today was my thirteenth birthday.

I had little to do but think these last few months, and I will admit that while I would like to live in my old dream such a hope is unlikely to come about. But I had stubbornly grasped what little hope I had and stayed to watch my family and friends walk next to me each day without ever seeing me there.

Surely mother would remember her only daughter on her birthday!

She would wake up and find me sitting patiently in the chair she had combed my hair in each morning while the birds cheerfully chirped outside her window. Father would smile knowingly as he sat down to breakfast before handing me my first present under the table-all without mother noticing (of course). Brother would pretend to ignore me all day as I bothered him incessantly like the little girl I had been, only to smile and laugh as he picked me up and gave me a piggyback ride back home for a meal only he could make.

Only, this year he didn't need to pretend.

We had fallen onto that ritual on my fourth birthday after he had turned thirteen.

He was an adult now and could not be bothered with his annoying little sister. All day he had pretended that it couldn't possibly be my birthday, I would never get old like him. But he dropped little treats for me all day as he apprenticed as a gardener.

Somehow that hurt the most. Brother wasn't pretending at all. He simply did not remember it was my birthday-he didn't even know he had a little sister.

I wept. I wept until the white moon came up, white as decayed bone.

Through my one act of sorcery I had learned how precious life was, how precious family was. Now I would have to live my life as a ghost without them.

As I watched the moon pass across the vault of twinkling blackness I knew that I must live my life as best I could now. Next time I saw the Shadow Guide I would take his offer and return to that odd world of barbarians, sorcerers and ghosts.

I watched the moon and bitterly cried myself to sleep.


	3. Hatred

I hated my sorcery.

It was so beautiful, so tempting, so hurtful.

Yet here I stood at the edge of the river and wrought my devilry. Nothing elaborate mind you, the family the Shadow Guide had brought me to had smiled sadly and welcomed me into their family, their extremely hard-working family. And so I worked my sorcery each evening before the sun set and _moved_ the water up the bank in order to water each line of growing plants.

That was all they asked of me.

I was fed, clothed, and housed. They accepted me, my quiet apathy and aloofness.

The moon had risen early tonight. I finished my single chore and sat in the drying mud I had created to stare.

The sky was blazing with light in a molten mirror of orange and gold; The sun so bright, yet the moon so very white.

I hated them!

"Let her be, we cannot force her to forget her family."

"She's in so much pain, I wish we could help."

"I know, but she is not our daughter unless she wills it so."

The voices drifted up the river. I'm sure they did not mean for me to hear but water was mine and transmitted what it heard to me.

With the sun going down I could imagine them lovingly shooing their youngest to get ready for bed while the elder children finished whatever work they could while the sun provided light.

Hatred coursed within me and I was barely aware of the water surging around me.

I could make them as non-existent as I was to my family. Wipe away their laughter and cheer, their tenderness and compassion, their…

mother, who patiently wove clothing for her family

father who worked in the earth and brought life to his village

small son who followed his big brothers everywhere they went hoping for a piggyback ride.

Water sloshed around me but I could not manage a single tear as the heavens darkened and the moon shone brightest in the sky.

There was no going back. I knew that, somehow had always known it.

A hundred years ago there had been a thousand villages like my own: Sanguine's Paradise.

Pretty right?

Most had bloated in plague or shrunk in famine as the people blithely ignored reality: Blood's Delusion.

A few villages had survived till now, thanks to the Shadow Guides who tirelessly guarded them and the generosity of a few good people like my new...family who insured they had enough food and medicine.

They could not know.

They would never understand.

It would have been better if the barbarian ghosts had let us die in our own bloody paradise and I hated them with all my heart for their humane souls.


	4. Curiosity

I tried to hold on to my hate, my loyalty.

The quiet compassion of a parent somehow has a way of wearing a person down though… as can the loud exuberance of a young boy.

I had never had a baby brother.

None of the four older boys were _my_ older brother. The woman and her husband were not _my_ parents. I didn't want them and I certainly didn't need them. They didn't need to interpose themselves between me and my detached reality… and oddly, they didn't.

The woman looked at me with pity and sadness but had been convinced to let me grieve on my own, to find my own way. I could see the pain in her husband's eyes when he saw me, for whatever reason he loved me-likely more than anyone had reason to love me. But he was determined to never show me pity or charity.

He was the one that forced me to become part of the family.

His was the devious mind.

While the woman would have smothered me in the loving embrace of 'family', he made sure I worked. I worked like every other member of the family. He made sure I ate, something I would have conveniently forgotten about given an opportunity, because I would need my strength for the day. I even had to learn maths and my letters.

When I did not have work or learning, I wandered. The woman wanted to know where I had gone. Didn't I know it could be dangerous out there alone? But she would quiet down at a glance from him.

He would simply mention a relevant fact: A flowering peony can bring luck to anyone that sees it; or, mulberry leaves with barley can make a very tasty tea. It had to have been sorcery that made me listen with interest just as it must have been sorcery for him to know I had walked through a field of peonies or sat under a mulberry bush.

The woman I could easily hate. The man...I learned to hate with the normal, everyday hatred of an adolescent child towards a father.

But today my hatred slipped and I hardly noticed.

It wasn't because of the woman or her husband though.

They had five sons.

Mostly they ignored me. One was completely indifferent to me, one found my intrusion distasteful but manageable, and the oldest two had briefly tried to befriend me.

I sat under the mulberry tree I had found two days earlier and was trying to remember the words to one of the songs mother sang to me as a child. A pile of the berries sat next to me as I hummed quietly to myself.

"Ew, these are really sour!"

A voice cut into my reverie and I couldn't help it. I screamed.

An answering scream echoed my own and I gasped desperately for air...only to scream again.

Once more a scream echoed me.

Before I could compose myself or even figure out why I was screaming the voice cut in once more, eerily echoing my thoughts,

"So,... why are we screaming anyways?"

I managed to take note of my surroundings and finally saw the figure standing behind me. His mouth and hands were stained blood red.

He was also looking at me with a quizzical expression on his face before he grinned, "I can keep screaming though if that's what you want. Mom's not here to yell at me and I think it's kind of fun!"

I stared incredulously for only as long as it took for him to take in a deep breath, preparing himself to scream a third time.

"What are you doing? Don't you know it could be dangerous coming out here by yourself?"

Even as I said it I couldn't believe those words came out of my mouth.

He looked at me blankly before he winked (it was more of a blink), "I wanted to know where you went and mum was busy doing laundry down at the river." He trailed off with another knowing 'wink'.

Oops, I usually helped with laundry. Water sorcery was particularly helpful in that chore.

But what did I care if I wasn't around to help with laundry. These weren't my people.

I sat back down with my back to the tree and started to hum.

A quiet, but clean soprano voiced the words I had been trying to remember all afternoon.

My baby brother smiled sadly up at me, "Oma used to sing that to me every night before she died."

Memories flooded back into me, the words had been a little different but it was the same song that I had heard for years until I had argued that I was 'too old now'.

"Do you remember your Oma and Opa?"

The innocent query left me bereft of defenses and words poured from me as I spoke of my family. They would always be _my_ family and as I talked the hatred I had harbored slowly dissipated.

My baby brother ate all the mulberries I had carefully picked as the ripest and sweetest, but his annoyingly loud, treble voice joined me freely in laughter as I spoke of all the things I had forgotten.

* * *

The grizzled old man wept quietly where he stood behind another tree before he picked himself up and went back to his small farm-his daughter would make sure his baby boy would make it home safely.

* * *

A/N: This was supposed to be a one-shot. Now I've finished four (admittedly short) chapters. I almost cried though! For whatever reason I love how this story is turning out. It's probably not overly proper english, but it is unique and incredibly interesting for me to write.

If you've made it this far into the story, please let me know what you think! Has anything resonated with you or is it just too odd? Also, if you've enjoyed it and think others may as well, don't forget to favorite it. Short stories are easily ignored in favour of stories with over 100k words.


	5. Crush

It had been two years before I called him Father. It had been an accident, but…

What can I say? I was no longer a child that focused solely on her own desires and needs.

Nope, now all my energy went towards another.

And no. It was _not_ 'father'.

Gross!

I was sixteen now.

Tall, blond and handsome. Eyes so dark you could fall into them forever… and his smile!

Half the shirts almost ended up floating downstream when the Shadow Guide waved to me on his way to the house. _So_ handsome! Also one of the few men who came out to the farm...

We weren't that far from town, but why would anyone bother? Father did a lot of business with the Shadow Guide though so he would visit at least once a season.

I quickly finished my chores and headed back to the house.

I giggled a little as I imagined myself taking the Shadow Guide's hand and running off to a meadow of flowers where we would lay down and stare lovingly into each other's eyes for eternity.

I even tried to sashay a bit and fixed my face in that ridiculously vapid look my stupid brother's girlfriend always wore under her… paintings.

Of course he walked around the corner right then and sneered at me. "Visitor's for you. Maybe he finally found a loony hospital that'll accept you."

Four relatively sweet, or at least hard-working, brothers and only one idiot-pretty good for a family as large as this one.

I stuck out my tongue and exaggerated my flouncing step.

Turning the corner I stopped at the window and tried to listen in before I barged into the house.

"She's so young…"

I could hear mother's plaintive tone and could just as easily imagine the fortifying hand father would place on her shoulder to calm her down.

"Old enough to make her own decisions though, dear."

"I intend to ask her, I just wanted to inform you first as her guardians."

I… stood there.

I knew what a little girl's crush was and I wasn't stupid. Did… was he really? But… huh?

"...er decision. I'll go find her."

"Thanks."

I quickly tip-toed around the corner of the house towards the river before debating whether I should make a dash for safety or pretend I'd heard nothing.

"There you are."

And… I really should have made a run for it!

As father led me into the house my heart started to beat faster and faster.

What should I do?

What should I say?

I was sixteen now. Everyone seemed to know the Shadow Guide so surely he must be important and I could do worse for myself.

Panic set in-I don't even know his name!

How could this happen so fast? And they wanted _me_ to make the choice? It should be mother and fa…

Father gently touched my shoulder.

Not that he showed any emotion outwardly, but he was there. Whatever happened, he would always be there.

I steeled myself and looked up to find myself staring into reassuring black and orange eyes. They were the first thing I had really seen when I had left my former life.

They had been the first things I saw that gave me any indication that _I_ was alive and not a ghost.

So, of course, I had decided that we were meant to be! Love at first sight, right?

The eyes crinkled into a charming sadness.

Ok, maybe I really could fall in love with my first girl's crush? It happens!

"I'm sorry, I wanted to let you know that your papa died last night and was wondering if you wanted to watch his funeral?"

I could only stare at him in confusion.


	6. Grief

I stared as mama walked past papa's grave, only marked by a few withering dandelions and a single peony.

Father asked if I wanted anyone else to come with me. I should have said yes, but it hadn't felt right. When we arrived I requested my seven days of mourning and the Shadow Guide had respectfully left, promising to return on the eighth day.

So now I grieved by myself.

I had learned quite a lot the last three years. Father had insisted that I should learn anything I wanted, even as the boys were allowed to do.

Intellectually I knew that I would be grieving by myself. I knew quite a lot about sorcery and ghosts and the barbarians I lived amongst.

My family, and all who lived in these villages scattered across the elemental nations, were under an unbreakable sorcery called a 'genjutsu'. They would live their lives as their ancestors had for the last hundred years, in peaceful bliss-never to know sorrow and misery.

Never to know sorrow and misery!

Grief is not meant to be borne alone.

Nor is it meant to be forgotten.

We had arrived in Sanguine's Paradise less than twenty-four hours since papa had died and so were able to watch as my mama and brother had buried papa in the shallowest of graves. Mama had placed her dandelions on top of the dirt shoveled over papa and gone back to her smithy.

Once everyone had left, the Shadow Guide had properly buried papa (hundreds of thousands had been estimated to die within the first year of the genjutsu from diseases and starvation) and I placed a single peony on his grave-the action of a ghost, to be ignored and forgotten.

Now, Mama didn't even glance at the dandelions she had placed on her beloved's grave. The man she had grown up with and loved. The man she _loved_!

For almost thirteen years I had watched my parents. They lived for one-another, for their son and their beloved daughter.

As I watched Papa being buried I had wanted to return to my family so much!

I wanted to return to my life of happiness and innocence.

After only a few days, mama had forgotten the one she had shared her whole life with-forgotten the grief, the sorrow… the joy, the pain, the love.

The Shadow Guide offered me his hand and I took it without once looking back.

* * *

A/N: This one definitely made me a little teary-eyed and was thought provoking. Would you rather be able to forget everything that caused you pain or remember both the good and the bad?


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